ࡱ> =?<%` bjbjNN .2,,2 D 2 :8 8 8 8 8 8 8 []]]]]]$ h"JW8 8 WW8 8 W8 8 [W[8 @ .[0D#7D#D#/, 8  DB F8 8 8 8 8 8 WWWW222$VD222V222 The Book of Irish Writers, Chapter 43 Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989 Its appropriate that Samuel Beckett, with his reputation as a bleak and despairing writer, should have been born on Friday the 13th - Good Friday, the 13th of April 1906 to be precise - in Foxrock, Co. Dublin. Becketts early years and education were those of the son of a prosperous Protestant family. Like Oscar Wilde before him he was educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. He graduated from Trinity College in Dublin with a first class degree; he was also a great cricketer at Trinity - and may be the only Nobel Prize winner for Literature to be listed in the Cricket Almanac, Wisden! His visits to the theatre at this time introduced him to plays by Synge, Yeats and Sean OCasey. After graduation Beckett was a French teacher in Campbell College in Belfast. He was unhappy here describing his students as the cream of Ulster . rich and thick. Late in 1928, when he was 23 years old, Beckett moved to Paris to take up a post at the prestigious cole Normale Suprieure. He also met and befriended James Joyce. Becketts need to escape from Joyces influence explains a lot about his later writing; this would reject Joyces exuberant use of language in favour of an increasingly pared-down, minimalist style - which Beckett achieved partly by writing in French as a form of self-discipline. In 1933, when Beckett was almost 30, both his cousin, Peggy Sinclair - with whom he was having an affair - and his father died. Depressed and guilty, and more than ever in conflict with his domineering mother, Beckett spent time in London undergoing psychotherapy - which intensified his interest in forms of psychological disturbance. His bleakly comic novel Murphy (published in 1938) reflects this interest - while also satirising Irish literary society. The late 1930s were incident-packed years: still restlessly travelling, Beckett toured Nazi Germany; was involved in a Dublin libel trial - during which he was described as a bawd and blasphemer; and, on returning to Paris, was stabbed by a pimp in a random act of violence! Recovering in hospital he was visited by Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, a pianist whom he had known for a decade and with whom, after this, he would live for the next 50 years. Beckett was in Dublin in 1940 and could have remained here in safety. But he returned to Paris, finding war in Europe preferable to peace in Ireland He joined the French Resistance, working as a courier. In August 1942, after escaping a Gestapo round up, he and Suzanne fled to Roussillon a small village in the South of France where they helped the local Resistance by storing arms. Beckett returned to Paris with Suzanne after liberation in 1944. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and a resistance medal in 1945. Paris now became his home, and he entered into the mature phase of his writing - which he had continued during the war years. Waiting for Godot was originally written and staged in French. Famously described as a play in which nothing happens, twice as the first act is much the same as the second its two main characters argue, sing, play games,  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter" \l "swapping" \o "Barter" swap  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat" \o "Hat" hats, and contemplate  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide" \o "Suicide" suicide, anything to pass the time while they wait for the mysterious Godot. No doubt Beckett was influenced by the two uncertain and fearful years that he and Suzanne had spent trapped in remote Roussillon. Although Waiting For Godot is a philosophical and experimental work, it also shows the influence of Irish theatre - combining the rhythms of Synge, the austerity of Yeatss drama and OCaseys sense of chaos. This literary and philosophical heritage seems to justify Brendan Behans comment that: When Sam Beckett was in Trinity College listening to lectures, I was in the Queens Theatre, my uncles music hall. Thats why my plays are music hall and his are university lectures. But Beckett does owe debts to music hall acts and silent movie stars; Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy (especially in the scene where they swap hats), music hall clowns all are pure Beckett! In turn, many TV sit-coms - from Steptoe and Son to Father Ted - share the basic set up of Becketts drama: people trapped together, desperately keeping themselves occupied. In later life Becketts work becomes more and more terse: the need to speak is countered by the impossibility of saying anything meaningful. Such writing gave rise to his reputation as a remote and reclusive figure, but many younger Irish writers tell stories of meeting him in Paris and being given hospitality and help while getting quizzed about all the gossip from Dublin! Beckett was always engaged with reality: if he seems bleak its because he dared to confront reality more than most of us would be willing to try. #%'BC ! 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